How to Cure a Fanatic
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
‘A hero of mine, a moral as well as literary giant’ Simon Schama
Amos Oz, the internationally acclaimed author of A Tale of Love and Darkness and Judas, grew up in war-torn Jerusalem, where as a boy he witnessed first-hand the poisonous consequences of fanaticism.
In How To Cure a Fanatic Amos Oz analyses the historical roots of violence and confronts truths about the extremism nurtured throughout society. By bringing us face to face with fanaticism he suggests ways in which we can all respond.
From the author of A Tale of Love and Darkness and Man Booker International Prize shortlisted Judas.
‘He was the conscience of Israel’ Roger Cohen, New York Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Oz, one of Israel's foremost novelists and also a leader in the peace movement, sets up opposite poles pragmatism and fanaticism in the two essays in this thin (both in size and content) volume. Pragmatism is Oz's path to peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Writing in ardent, articulate and informal prose (the essays originated as lectures), Oz (A Tale of Love and Darkness) writes that this conflict is a straightforward, though intense, battle over real estate in which both sides have legitimate claims to one tiny piece of land. And the necessary compromise in the form of two states, "divided roughly according to demographic realities" will be deeply painful for both, the loss of land a kind of amputation, in Oz's words. Also crucial to peace, in Oz's view, is providing homes and jobs for the residents of the squalid Palestinian refugee camps. But how to convince the anti-compromise fanatics on both sides? On this score, Oz is less satisfying, suggesting the remedial value of humor and imagination (i.e., learning to really see the other). The book's third part, an interview with Princeton University Press's Brigitta van Rheinberg, is largely redundant, leaving this feeling more like a padded pamphlet than a book, despite the virtues of Oz's perspective.
